One of the newest raw images from Cassini’s latest flyby shows the icy terrain of Saturn’s moon Dione, with steep hills, ridges and the bright face of one of the many deep canyons that meander across its surface. Known as “wispy lines”, these canyon walls expose bright water ice (that makes up about a quarter…
Tag: science
Avalanche!
It’s always exciting to catch geologic surface events in action on Mars, reminding us that the red planet isn’t just a museum piece but a very active place! The image above is from the HiRISE camera on the Reconnaissance Orbiter showing dust clouds billowing up nearly 200 feet at the base of an ice cliff…
Rhea and the Rings
This is one of those sublime photos from Cassini that just make me smile. Taken on March 24, this raw image shows Rhea, Saturn’s second-largest moon, suspended in orbit in front of the twilight side of Saturn, its rings reduced to a thin ribbon of bands at this viewing angle. The width of the rings…
Lady’s Choice
Scientists prove it: a girl knows how to make up her mind. The image above shows the first target object – that football-sized layered rock – autonomously chosen by the Mars rover Opportunity on March 4. Opportunity selected the rock after taking a series of wide-angle panoramic images of the area and using her new…
This Week in Space
The space shuttle Discovery prepares for launch and new discoveries from NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer…kamikaze comets, another exoplanet spotted, a closer look at the moons Rhea, Pallene and Phobos, lost spacecraft, an interview with retired astronaut Bernard Harris and lots more in this edition of This Week in Space with Miles O’Brien. Enjoy! Provided…
Inside the Hurricane
The largest storm in the solar system, Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot, is a monstrous 15,000-mile-wide hurricane that’s been swirling in the giant planet’s mid-lower latitudes for at least 300 years. It’s believed that the storm’s colors are caused by the different elements within Jupiter’s upper atmosphere… ammonia, methane, water, hydrocarbons and other chemicals that create a…
When the Wind Blows
A huge 800-plus-foot-wide dust devil swirls across the parched plains of Mars in this image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera. Heading westward when the image was taken, it casts a tall diffuse shadow toward the northeast. This photo is part of a study of the knobby surface texture of the region in the…
Just Passing By
It’s been a while since I posted one of these…it’s an animation made up of 16 raw images from the Cassini spacecraft, taken on March 12, showing Saturn’s moons Dione and Titan passing each other. The small, cratered and frozen Dione couldn’t be more different than her much larger, haze-enshrouded sister Titan, but we’re reminded…
Alone in the Universe
What’s it like to step through the hatch of a space shuttle and look out into the universe? The reality of it is deceptively incomprehensible to most, but Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield gives an amazing first-person description of his spacewalk experience to Universe Today’s Nancy Atkinson in this article. Check it out, he really stirs…
This Week in Space
The new IMAX: Hubble 3D astronaut stars and launch party at the Air and Space Museum in DC takes center stage in this edition of This Week in Space with Miles O’Brien. Also, the president prepares to support his new plans for NASA and the shuttle mission may get a stay of execution (as long…
Heeeere’s Phobos!
After much anticipation, this just in: an amazingly detailed image from the March 7 flyby of Phobos! As Phil Plait might say, click to emphobosize. 😉 See more info and a couple more similar images on the ESA’s Mars Express site. Phobos sure has an interesting surface texture. It’s almost as if boulders have been…
Fatal Attraction
This video from SOHO spanning several days’ worth of time shows the activity of the Sun’s corona as stellar energy is streamed out into space against a passing background field of stars…and then right in the final moments we see it: the bright trail of a comet as it makes its final journey straight into…
Lights in the Dark 